Thursday, 20 November 2014

Christmas Tree Biscuits

I've never actually made these biscuits before, I'd describe them as very festive tasting and also very fun to make as well as eat! They take around an hour to make ( including chilling, cooking, cooling and decoration) but are super super simple!

Recipe - Makes 25-30:

225g/8 oz butter, softened

140g/5 oz caster or granulated sugar

1 egg yolk, lightly beaten

grated rid of one orange

280g/10 oz plain flour

pinch of salt

For decoration:

Icing sugar

any small sweets

Method:

Put butter & sugar in a bowl and cream together until light and fluffy.

Recipe inspired by the '1 dough, 50 cookies' recipe book

Beat in the egg yolk and orange rind. Sift together the salt and flour and add to the bowl and stir until thoroughly combined.

Half the dough, shape into balls, wrap in clingfilm and chill for anywhere between half an hour to an hour.

Remove 1 of the balls from the fridge. lightly flour the surface and rolling pin. Roll half the dough to about 3mm/ ⅓ of an inch thick.

Use a shape cutter of your choice to make as many biscuits as you desire, be wary though, the cooking speed is dependent on the size of your biscuits (These took half the recommended cooking time).

Repeat the rolling and cutting process with the remaining dough and then use the second ball of dough to do the same.

Lightly grease a baking tray (more if you have them. You make a lot of biscuits!) and space out your shapes. The biscuits don't spread so you can place them pretty close (just not touching).

Place into the oven for around 10-15 minutes. Checking them every 3-4 minutes. You want to remove them when they're still rather pale, it took me 3 batches to distinguish when they needed removing! If you can see any golden brown on them, they're overdone so be careful.

Once baked, place onto a cooling rack and decorate with items of your choice. I opted for a sprinkle of icing sugar, but you can go as wild as you like!

I hope you enjoyed this recipe as much as I did, if you bake any for winter, tag the picture #lialikestobake and I'll check it out!